About Michelle Boyd Waters

I have been a writer for as long as I can remember and first published my work for a real audience in middle school. Yes, I was on the yearbook staff. I followed that experience with writing for the newspaper staffs throughout junior high, high school, and college. After majoring in journalism, with minors in art and public relations, I worked for local weekly and daily newspapers. My writing has been published in The Dallas Morning News, The Edmond Evening Sun, on the AP Wire, and in the Oklahoma English Journal where I currently serve as co-editor.

Besides being a writer, I also consider myself an artist, photographer, and teacher.

Most importantly, I am a mom to two kids and three dogs, and I also have three grandcats.

My husband and I have been married for almost a quarter of a century. We met while we were both working at the Shawnee News-Star in 1995. I worked for the paper as an intern on the local police beat and I was also an editor for The Bison, the weekly Oklahoma Baptist University student newspaper.

I had started writing for newspapers in the 9th grade and thought that becoming a professional journalist was what I wanted to do with my life. I pursued this dream right up until I became pregnant with my son in 1999.

That’s when I realized working odd hours and being away from my baby for at least 8 hours a day wouldn’t work for me. How could I concentrate on writing a news story about a five car pile up on the turnpike when I had a baby at some daycare center missing his one and only mama?

So, I left my job and became a stay at home mom. During this time, I found a few SAHM communities and started teaching myself graphic and web design. (After all, I had lots of baby pictures that needed to go online.)

And that’s when I discovered many of my friends were selling cloth diapers, jewelry and baby slings online. They found out I could create websites and wanted me to build e-commerce sites for them.

A year later, I filed for my sole proprietorship and starting building websites full time. My mission was to help work at home moms learn how to sell physical products online.

I started out offering hosting and web design. With more years of experience under my belt and after working with more than 400 WAHMs, I realized that I wasn’t really doing what God wanted me to.

After almost 10 years running my own business, I realized it was time to close that chapter in my life. I sold the business in August 2009 to another company that I knew would take care of my clients.

I earned my Oklahoma teaching certification in English and Journalism and began teaching middle and high school students in urban and rural areas.

And I’ve always wanted to write a novel. So far, I have a promising start on the novel, according to my YA Novel Writing professor at the University of Oklahoma. I’m also working on the fifth revision of my short story “Of Clownfish and Sea Stars.”

I am also an editor of a state-wide peer reviewed journal and have published a short story and poem in online publications. 

Want to learn how you can become a writer?

Fill out the form below with your name and email address. and I’ll send you ideas for how you can become a better writer. along with news about my career.

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